Window by window and We (two ‘tiny’ haibun at Prune Juice)
Window by window
She peels her mornings. A miser of darkness, she lets the sun in by strands. I saw her once. She is a flower.
at the cusp
of Cancer and Leo
a fire wheel
We
We write our names together. It’s marriage says the book. Our meals apart. It’s work. We feed different nights. In different skies. What then is it?
cross wind—
cliffs echoing
wrong echoes
prune juice November 2014
random seasons, a haiku/senryu series
stone wall
mottled hands escaping
through air
ham flavor
hangs about her sweater
hospice weekend
though touch-less
the intimate rustle of silk
fall
dog buries
bruises
hobbling out of my midnight winter moon
apple core
how to bottle
memories
a tiger
musing on my eye
autumn dusk
chopped beets
i wash the knife
of traces
open page
an opaque scent
in his bath water
oak stump–
i remember the hornets
last summer
shell shards
on a paint roller
a womb
a simple test (a non-haikai play of verses)
what cranks the wheel
why we need to care
which way to hold an infant
how to wipe dry the tears
when to turn away an eye
whose hand to hold on a cliff
whatever happens in dreams
whichever flower to lay on a tomb
however a name sounds
whenever a manacle breaks
whosoever belongs to whom
where to bury endings
because wounds bleed
laughter crackles
smiles break walls
sobs thicken nights
giggles bring in the dawn
sighs stir cankered clouds
words breathe life to bones
wings shade a peregrine
ponds feed moonlight
I will brave the deep
vow on a mountain
promise with the galaxies
pledge on steel
believe moons stay
conversations…a tanka duet
1.
we do try
to strain storm dregs
untying
old selves on a wire mesh
in bus conversations
2.
leaf orange boy
leaning on his elbow
point by point
on Confucius with dad
knee-high in fall
posted at Tanka Poets in Site (facebook)
About
autumn wind
wondering about lilies
in a mountain pond
Tell me a writer who really gets a satisfying jornal, in Spanish a daily wage or its equivalent, and I’ll bare a spirit in constant bouts of doubtfulness. Does a writer earn more because of what he writes and how he does it? Or is a writer paid more or less because of who he is? Is it money or honor he expects to receive?
Ahhh … but money as wage, and praise or honor as reward would be too predictable, too common as Job lamented in the Book of Job. It is in these lines that read: “Is not man’s life on earth nothing more than pressed service, his times no better than hired drudgery? Like the slave, sighing for the shade, or the workman with no thought but his wages, months of delusion I have assigned to me, nothing for my own but nights of grief. Lying in bed I wonder, ‘When will it be day?’ Risen I think, ‘How slowly evening comes!’
Restlessly I fret till twilight falls. Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle my days have passed, and vanished, leaving no hope behind. Remember that my life is but a breath, and that my eyes will never again see joy.”
Not money but joy is the ultimate wage as the passage implies. And joy is not hard to earn for it is in everyday life if we have eyes to see, a nose to smell, fingers to touch, ears to hear–a heart beating. This to me, is how a writer earns a daily wage. His wages then take the guise of treasures his heart can transfigure into a universe of thought that taps into other hearts, that causes a swirl in the depth of other souls, or that makes wings to sprout on leaden heels.
Sometimes not joy but rueful, poignant moments are my pick. Take what I earned once: On my walk home in my neighborhood, I caught two clumps of snowdrops–such tiny blossoms smaller than fingertips that do not look up but shyly droop close to black patches on the ground winter has frozen. That afternoon in the frosty wind, they trembled as if ready to turn away and run but how could they? For that poignant moment on seeing the wintry rain beat on the fragile snowdrop–as if pushing it to go home now, go to sleep–I earned my jornal, my daily wage.
Once on summer walk, the crackle of dried leaves just hit me both like the laughter of children and sobs long suppressed. Neither one of them would resolve the dryness, but I recalled how each does bring tears: laughter for joy, sobs for healing that comes with the release of a dammed-up pain. My jornal that day came as two haiku.
Fall has since shortened the day and the heart begins to crave for lost space that it doesn’t even recall which or where. I feel that most treasures have turned into mush so much so I wouldn’t be able to sift them off the ground. Yet I caught the dying day yesterday–so glorious in the gold of autumn it opened a flip side of serene heaven. Blades of grass coated in diadems of rain that carpet the lawns render royal walks poor by imitation. A burst of red maple against an inky blue sky humbled me, a soul bragging about her skill to recreate beauty in words.
I suppose I’m taking Job’s reflections to heart. I’d rather not gloss over each day and look beyond what’s there, right before me, or else fragile as is my breath one day “my eyes may never again see joy” to write. With what then will I compare the eternal joy, the ultimate wage I await?
Yet for now, as other eyes hanker to make the invisible visible, I put a tag on some moments of joy. Like on seeing the snowdrops, I paid myself $200 as my jornal.
What could have been yours?
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jornales 
‘the colour plum’ in a quartet of (non-haikai*) 3-line poems…and why
I think I’m veering farther and farther away from haiku, but the structure has stayed like a template in my being; hence, my lines insist on being ‘three’, of two parts often unrelated (juxtaposition). While I still draw the essence of my poems from Nature, what comes out no longer expands contemplation but rather, the lines focus often on painful truths. I know there’s enough pain swirling in the universe right now (as is perceived) and it’s what I can’t seem to whitewash with the beauty of virgin snow. I wish I could but in writing haiku, the practice of finding ‘two-sides’ in a whole, has stayed with me as a simultaneous numbra/penumbra, thus, these non-haikai* poems. Still, it could just be a phase that has slipped in with grey November, which spring will lift up.
the colour plum
hints of pay back
maneuvers
bramble flower
still not enough
prickly stares
isolation bars
no matter our fingers
in knots
speckled steps
dare you break
rain patterns
moon basket
in it I carry
a widow’s comb
*nod to Johannes S. H. Berg, who coined it
November 28, 2014 Posted by alee9 | comment, non-haikai, poetry | bramble, colour, comb, fingers, flower, moon, plum, rain | 2 Comments